Selected Shorter PoemsLongman, 1995 - 438 pages This is the first collection of Spenser's shorter poems to offer modernised spelling and punctuation, thus placing the poet alongside his contemporaries - amongst them Sidney, Shakespeare, and Donne - as a writer who can now be read and understood by modern readers without the obstacles of archaic spelling and punctuation artificially obscuring his meaning. Spenser's celebrated manifesto poem, The Shepherds' Calendar (1579), together with its original prefatory material and the contemporary glosses by E.K., appears here for the first time in a modernised form, but with the conscious archaisms and dialectal forms retained so that it can now, for the first time since it was published, be read as the linguistic palimpsest Spenser intended it to be. Each poem is prefaced by a headnote explaining occasion, genre, sources, theme, and current critical debate, which, together with the detailed footnotes, allows the reader to place each work in its critical and historical context. |
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Common terms and phrases
Aeneid Agrippa Amoretti archaic beauty bower bride care-full Catullus Chaucer Christ citing Colin Cuddy Cupid death delight Diggon divine doth earth echo Eclogues Edmund Spenser Elizabeth Elizabethan emblem English Epith Epithalamion eyes Faerie Queen fair February Ficino flock flowers Geneva gloss glory gloss goddess goodly grace hath headnote heart heaven heavenly Hobbinol honour Hymn instance January Latin light London Lord love's lover lust Marot marriage meaning mediaevalism Metamorphoses mought Muses neo-Platonic northern/Scots November numerological OED's first citation Orpheus Orphic Ovid pain pastoral Perigot Petrarch pleasance poem poet poetic praise punning queen Renaissance Rime SC April seemeth sense sheep Shepheardes Calender shepherds sing song Song of Solomon Sonnet SONNET 28 SONNET 35 SONNET 42 sonnet 53 soul Spenser's Amoretti Spenserian stanza sweet symbol thee Thenot Theocritus thou Tityrus traditional unto Venus verse Virgin Willy wont word